The dose doesn't do what they think it does. It buries everything.
Not this.
Not her.
Chapter 3
Hope
Thomas King has been on 2mg lorazepam for eleven months. The chart says anxiety management. He's sitting on his bed with both feet flat on the floor and his hands folded in his lap, staring at the wall. His eyes aren't tracking anything.
"Mr. King." I knock on the open door frame. "Mind if I come in?"
He turns his head. "Sure. It's Thomas."
His room is clean. Bed made, corners tucked, shoes lined up under the desk. The shoes haven't been worn—the soles are still white. I pull up the chair and sit across from him.
"Thank you, Thomas. How's your week been?"
"Good," he says. His pupils are pinned tight even in the low light. Eleven months on the same dose, no reassessment, no stepping down, no note from anyone asking whether the anxiety they prescribed it for still exists. The prescription went in and nobody looked at it again.
"Do you know when your next medication review is?"
He blinks at me. "My what?"
"Let me look into that for you." I thank him for his time and close the door behind me.
Ward A holds twenty-six patients. General population, lowest risk tier, shared common areas and supervised outdoor time. Most of these men eat together, attend group therapy, move between their rooms and the day room without an escort.
Every patient has a chart. Every chart has a medication log, incident history, and treatment plan. I go room by room. I introduce myself. I ask how they're doing. Most of them talk. A few don't. I don't push the ones who don't. I read their charts, write down what I see, and come back the next day.
A man named Bryan tells me his antipsychotic makes his jaw lock up and nobody's adjusted it. I ask how long. He says since March. It's October. Seven months of a side effect logged nowhere in his chart. His hand shakes when he demonstrates how his mouth won't open all the way in the mornings.
Another patient, Yoon, hands me a three-page letter he wrote to the governor about the food and asks if I can mail it. I tell him I can't, but I can document the complaint. He thinks about it and hands me the letter anyway. His handwriting is small and precise. He's been thinking about this for a while, and until today he didn't have anyone to hand it to.
"Thank you," he says. "For reading it."
"Of course." I fold the letter and slip it into my folder. "I'll make sure it's noted."
Room by room. Chart by chart. Eight days in and I'm running out of space. The notebook I brought is a hundred and twenty pages. At this rate I'll need a second one by next week.
In the common area, a man with sandy hair looks up from a half-finished jigsaw when I walk past. He's younger than most ofthe ward—twenty-four, maybe twenty-five. He watches me cross the room, and when I catch his eye, he smiles. A real one. The first I've seen in this building.
"Hey." I smile back. "How are you?"
"Good." He holds my gaze a beat too long. "You're new."
"I am. Hope Turner. I'm the independent monitor."
"Casey." His smile doesn't waver. "Welcome to the madhouse."He glances at my lanyard. "Hope Turner." He says it back to me, slow and full. "That's such a beautiful name."
I give him a small wave and move on. Nice kid. I add his name to my list for chart review.
Ward B sits on the second floor. Higher security, individual cells, supervised movement, narrower corridors. I sign the clipboard at the checkpoint and the guard buzzes me through without conversation. He doesn't look at me, doesn't acknowledge me, hits the button and goes back to his phone.
George Palmer's cell is third on the left. He's a big man, mid-fifties, quiet. When I knock, he's at his desk writing in a notebook with a pencil sharpened down to a nub.
"Mr. Palmer? I'm Hope Turner. The independent monitor."
